My assumption: learning organizations are able to gather information from
the good and not so good about life and ideas about life. Or words to that
effect.
There has been for sometime debates over questions like: "Are leaders born
or made?" Following that type discussion, regardless of a personal
opinion, can lead to an interesting perspective. Some people, without
overt intervention, seem to exhibit traits of leadership (course you see
what you understand in observations). These people may or may not go on to
be leaders. There are some that don't seem to have a clue about leadership
and yet later in life they "come out of their shell" and bingo, a leader.
There are some that have been provided all kinds of opportunity to lead,
have been given the training to lead, have been given the technical skills
to perform the tasks the followers must perform, etc. And yet, they can
not lead themselves out of the old "wet paper bag." I read in earlier
messages, to include the one that begged me to respond with "Not anyone
can be a leader," a set of assumptions that leadership is a technical
demonstration of skills, knowledge and ability. Yes, there are some that
will not ever be leaders. They will be the consummate follower in life,
vocation, or hobby. There is nothing inherently wrong with that, I don't
think. It is mostly a matter of choice, which gets to a key
characteristics of a leader: the willingness to lead.
>Whoa!! Let's unpack that, soldier (reference to your .mil domain). Are
>you actually saying that there are people for whom leadership is not
>possible? Could you describe the characteristics of such people? This
>might be one of the more interesting answers to what leadership is if you
>do.
[Host's Note: Thanks or the followup, Steve. ...Rick]
--"Swan, Steve R. SETA CONTR" <SwanSR@ftknox5-emh3.army.mil>
Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <rkarash@karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>